Cruelty and Decay in Two Empires: China and Rome

This article addresses the rise of poverty, violence, and decay in the pre-indus- trialized societies of the Roman and Chinese Empires. Major similarities between the declines of these two Empires include the unchecked authority of those in charge, an arbitrary market meant to serve the elite, and the costs of financing wars and luxury living. This is contrasted with the rage and unruliness of large numbers of lower class members who lacked the basic necessities of life, including food and work. One difference is that strong ethnic self-awareness in China survived the collapse of the empire, whereas Romes willingness to grant its land to foreigners contributed to subsequent fragmentation.     

Bush, China, Taiwan: A triangular analysis

This paper reexamines American policy toward China, Taiwan, and their ambivalent bilateral relationship, focusing on the period since Washington’s shift from strong (but not unconditional) support of Nationalist China to the role of balancer in the early 1970s, particularly on the most recent period under George W. Bush. We analyze the relationship from a strategic triangular perspective. The China-Taiwan-US relationship is triangular in the sense that each actor’s relations with the other two depend on its relations with the third. It is strategic in its focus on security. The United States has been the consistent “pivot” of this triangle, having better relations with both “wings” than they have with each other. Washington has retained this structurally advantageous position partly because of its disproportionate strategic weight, and partly because of the inherent difficulties Taipei and Beijing have had forging a cooperative bilateral relationship. This structure has been quite stable since the Cold War, as Washington has periodically shifted its balance from one wing to the other without altering the triangle’s basic configuration. Yet so long as the configuration is maintained, the basic problem on which the triangle is based — the contested independence of Taiwan — cannot be resolved. This creates a sense of national identity frustration that will continue to generate attempts at resolution, either by Taiwan’s declaration of independence or China’s forced reunification (or both). editor ofAsian Survey, has written or editedSino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications (1992),China’s Quest for National Identity (with Samuel Kim, 1993), and many other analyses of Chinese domestic and foreign policy. His most recent book (with Haruhiro Fukui and Peter N.S. Lee) isInformal Politics in East Asia (Cambridge, 2000).     

The Most Unique of all Unique Species

This article identifies the shortcomings of “orthodox neo-Darwinians” such as Richard Dawkins, George Williams and Daniel Dennett in their efforts to describe human nature and human pro-social behavior. As an alternative to the views of these thinkers, the efforts of Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and other “dual inheritance” theorists to describe the evolution of human nature are also characterized. It is argued that dual inheritance theorists have surpassed the orthodox neo-Darwinians in their explanations for very important and uniquely human features such as our extensive sociability, complex cumulative culture and morality.